Embedding Citizen Science in Research: Forms of engagement, scientific output and values for science, policy and society By1 Dick Kasperowski, Christopher Kullenberg, Åsa Mäkitalo University of Gothenburg2 Executive Summary This paper addresses emerging forms of Citizen Science (Citizen Science), and discusses their value for science, policy and society. It clarifies how the term Citizen Science is used and identifies different forms of Citizen Science. This is important, since with blurred distinctions there is a risk of both overrating and underestimating the value of Citizen Science and of misinterpreting what makes a significant contribution to scientific endeavour. The paper identifies three main forms of citizen science 1) Citizen Science as a research method, aiming for scientific output, 2) Citizen Science as public engagement, aiming to establish legitimacy for science and science policy in society, and, 3) Citizen Science as civic mobilization, aiming for legal or political influence in relation to specific issues. In terms of scientific output, the first form of Citizen Science exceeds the others in terms of scientific peer-reviewed articles. These projects build on strict protocols and rules for participation and rely on mass inclusion to secure the quality of contributions. Volunteers are invited to pursue very delimited tasks, defined by the scientists. The value of the three distinct forms of Citizen Science –for science, for policy and for society, is discussed to situate Citizen Science in relation to current policy initiatives in Europe and in the US. In quantitative terms the US, and particularly the NSF have so far taken a lead in allocating research funding to Citizen Science projects (primarily of the first form), however, the White House has recently issued a memorandum addressing societal and scientific challenges through citizen science covering all three forms discussed in this paper. As Citizen Science is currently being launched as a way to change the very landscape of science, important gaps in research are identified and policy recommendations are provided, in order for policy makers to be able to assess and anticipate the value of different forms of Citizen Science with regard to future research policy. 1E-mail: fi[email protected] 2Draft policy recommendation paper, open for comments. 1 Introduction It has become increasingly popular to engage masses of volunteers in scientific activities through open calls for assistance in some part of the scientific process3. The potential for volunteer contributions have expanded with the emergence of mass data and the possibilities of contemporary digital networking. Quite recently, two international organizations, the European Citizen Science Association and the US-based Citizen Science Association have been established to promote and organize further development of citizen science initiatives4. By extending research teams with online workforces of volunteers, time-consuming tasks that cannot be automated with sufficient quality (such as observation and classification) are possible to pursue effectively and cheaply. Such possibilities particularly respond to the needs of research fields with long-standing issues to cover large geographical areas or longer time-spans. The discussion of the contribution of this form of collaboration between scientists and volunteers, referred to as citizen science, are hampered by the diversity of activities and projects to which this label has been applied. Volunteers that contribute to some part of scientific production, is but one use of this term. There are at least two other uses of the terms citizen science; one that concerns engaging the public to understand the role of science in society to make them better informed for decision-making. Another relates to ‘bottom-up’ activities initiated by citizens themselves who create scientific data in order to gain influence over problems affecting them and their community. We will discuss these three uses of the term citizen science and clarify their differences. This is important since in recent years the term “citizen science” has gained salience in European research policy5, here formulated in the 2014 White Paper on Citizen Science in Europe: In Citizen Science, a broad network of people collaborate. Participants provide experimental data and facilities for researchers, raise new questions and co-create a new scientific culture. While they add value, volunteers acquire new learning and skills and gain a deeper understanding of the scientific work in appealing ways. As a result of this open, networked and transdisciplinary scenario, science-society-policy interactions are improved, leading in turn to a more democratic research based on evidence and informed decision-making. In this description of citizen science several formulations need to be unpacked and qualified6, particularly the new learning and skills that are claimed to be acquired by 3See for example http://zooniverse.org, http://ebird.org, http://fold.it, and http://citizensocialscience.org.uk/ 4See http://ecsa.biodiv.naturkundemuseum-berlin.de/ and http://citizenscienceassociation.org/ respectively. 5It was initiated through the SOCIENTIZE Project to the European Commission’s Digital Science Unit. 6In the 2015 report, validating the results of the public consultations on Science 2.0: Science in 2 citizens, and furthermore, if inclusion in scientific work necessarily leads to a more democratic form of research. The main purpose of this Opinion Paper is to identify and clarify three forms of citizen science, to discuss in what ways the ambitious aims expressed on a policy level7 (for example, as above) can be related to current engagements of volunteers in scientific research, and to provide a set of recommendations for initiating citizen science projects as part of research funding schemes. Three concerns have been taken into consideration for this purpose: 1) the history and value of volunteer contributions to scientific work with generating or classifying data, 2) the different functions of volunteer contributions, 3) scientific output, and quality8. The paper discusses the values of the three forms of citizen science identified; for society, for policy and for research, and ends with a set of recommendations for policy makers and research funders. 2. Three forms of citizen science 2.1. Citizen science a research method Scientific work has always relied on several actors, technologies and different forms of cooperation9. The engagement of volunteers as part of the scientific research process (citizen science as a method), has evolved into its current shape during the post-world war II period. In terms of scientific output, the traces are possible to follow back to the mid-1960s, notably with the North American Breeding Bird Survey. There are notable difficulties in assessing the scientific contribution of citizen science projects due to whether volunteers have been made visible or invisible in the publication of scientific results (Cooper et al. 2014) (see fig. 1 below). This must accordingly be taken in to account when analysing available data of scientific production from these projects. Citizen science as a research method is significant for the broader discussion around the contribution to science and knowledge. In this form of citizen science, volunteers are invited and relied upon for particular tasks. Data collection (typically in the form of observation) and analysis (in the form of classification), have been a costly and often Transition, the need to clarify the role of citizen science in research has recently been identified as an issue to address. 7See for example Nascimento et al. (2014), Holocher-Ertl et al. (2013), Pocock et al. (2014), http://www.buergerschaffenwissen.de/ 8These areas of inquiry are currently addressed in an ongoing trans-disciplinary research project “Taking Science to the Crowd: Researchers, Programmers and Volunteer Contributors Transforming Science Online” based at the University of Gothenburg, funded by the Marianne and Marcus Wallenberg Foundation MMW 2013.00.20. 9Volunteer contribution to scientific fields such as for instance astronomy, has a documented history, see Kärnfelt, 2014, for an early example. Galaxy Zoo would be a current equivalent, with online volunteers assisting in the morphological classification of galaxies, mainly from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. 3 Figure 1: Cumulative growth of Citizen Science publications. N = 1935. Search was conducted 2015-12-17. From Kullenberg & Kasperowski (2016). time-consuming task for research in fields such as for example ornithology, ecology or astronomy. Today the access to data is no longer such a prominent concern per se due to technical developments, and some part of the scientific work can sometimes be automated. However, to many research fields, including social sciences and the humanities, ‘big data’ carry great potential for new discoveries and pending resources can be adequately used in ways that provide for such analysis to be conducted10. Typically volunteers are deployed to solve problems that cannot be automated, for example recognizing patterns in large datasets, conducting extensive fieldwork outdoors or providing a low-cost but high-quality input to a particular element in the research process. An important concern and issue to address is of course data quality. Relying on contributions of volunteers, who have not undergone years of scientific training, has been a cause for lengthy discussion. Reliable contributions can, however, be made in specific types of